Esik arboretum

Esik arboretum is a dendrological park of about 365 hectares in the town of Esik (Issyk), in Enbekshikazakh district of Almaty region, at the foot of the Trans-Ili Alatau range east of Almaty city. As a state-protected park of republican significance, it functions as a planted botanical collection of trees and shrubs rather than a wild natural area, laid out to display species suited to the foothill climate of this part of southeastern Kazakhstan. Its grounds include watercourses and groves that make it a shaded green space in a town otherwise best known for the nearby Issyk kurgan, where the Golden Man burial was discovered. The arboretum serves both public recreation and, as with similar dendrological parks elsewhere in Kazakhstan, the testing of which introduced and native tree species grow successfully under the Almaty region's foothill conditions.